


4-Padawans and Lovers

by WritestuffLee



Series: The Warrior's Heart, Volume 4, The Long Shadow [4]
Category: Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: AU, M/M, POV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-12-03
Updated: 2006-12-03
Packaged: 2017-12-10 15:34:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/787637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WritestuffLee/pseuds/WritestuffLee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Qui-Gon catches Obi-Wan brooding and does a little reflecting and distracting himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	4-Padawans and Lovers

I’ve had three of each, each quite different from the last, but none so wonderful as the most recent concatenation of both. Perhaps I’ve finally gotten it right.

I wonder what inspires that particular thought, when I find Obi-Wan standing in the fading sunlight in our rooms. He’s only a few days back from his first solo missions, still tired and a little sore, using that as an excuse to sleep late and luxuriate in doing nothing. Nor can I blame him, with the tour he’s had and the injuries he’s sustained.

On first seeing him in the Healer’s Halls, I thought he looked thin and drawn and ragged. Now, cleaned up, with a few days’ rest and some good food in him, he looks . . . hard. Not just muscular, but a bit grim, almost fierce, if he weren’t so calm. It’s a hard-won Jedi’s calm, grounded in the Force, anchored in his own center. He’s been honed and sharpened over the last half year, and come back looking every bit the capable young knight—no more the padawan.

And the lover?

The lover is still there, with his own new confidence, and yet so different from Mace or Tahl: Mace, who had so little room in his life for non-absolutes, and Tahl, whose fierce independence finally turned her away even from me. Obi-Wan’s fierceness comes out in our bed, or wherever it is that we happen to land when the mood takes us. The horizontal surfaces in our rooms haven’t had such a workout since we first became lovers. My knight has no fear of asking for what he wants and some wily ways of guaranteeing my cooperation. His new boots, for example. I’m quite certain he has no intention of ever wearing those in the field, thank the Force.

But both the lover and former padawan have changed, and I see in his eyes that I have too, and that disconcerts him.

I join him where he stands in the window, basking in the late afternoon sun, and lean down to kiss him. He smiles and tilts his face up to meet my lips and the kiss we share is slow and sweet, starting deep and breaking off into pecks and nibbles, full of affection and delight. His hands come to rest on my waist and mine on his arms. We rub our cheeks against each other, and how I enjoy this new sensation of his soft beard catching in mine. Around his mouth it’s as soft as velvet, and I can’t resist stroking the backs of my fingers over it. He reminds me of an overgrown ginger feline as his eyes slit and he hums with pleasure, smiling dreamily as I scratch under his chin. I’m struck in that moment by how much I’ve missed him. “ _Kosai_ ,” _Beloved_ , I murmur, filled with tenderness, and kiss him again.

“ _Iji aijinn,_ ” he replies, both contentment and desire in his voice. _My lover._ “How was your day?” he asks.

In that simple question is a world that separates us. In temple he is idle but for practice in the salles, meetings with friends, and briefings and research for new missions. But my life is focused here now, in the classes I’m teaching, the committees I’ve been roped into, in tutoring Anakin, in my own mission. All of them take me away from his side, little as I want to be during his precious time home. “Boring and lonely. Have you been to the salles yet?”

“Not today,” he says with barely masked eagerness in his voice. “Are you offering?”

“As I’ve only just gone back, I thought it might be good to work with someone who knows my style, and how long I’ve been out.”

He grins then, eyes sparkling with mischief. “You mean someone who might go easy on you out of pity. Get your kit, Master Jinn. This is probably the only chance I’ll ever have to soundly thrash you.”

He doesn’t, quite, but he doesn’t take it easy on me, either.

I’ve gone a bit soft in the last year, not so much around the middle anymore, but my hands, which haven’t held a saber often in that time. We warm up together and go through several katas before we begin to spar. His movements are fluid and graceful. Mine are a bit stiff at first, but soon smooth out to match Obi-Wan’s and we fall again into the long-familiar rhythm we have shared for so many years. We have done this so often that it takes little work for us to fall into perfect synch with each other. With the bond open between us we are nearly one person with two bodies. It’s a pleasure for both of us, one I see reflected in his eyes.

The kata winds down and we face each other across the mat. And then the bond closes gently between us from Obi-Wan’s end, just enough to keep us from telegraphing our moves.

His first blow makes me grunt with its force and his speed leaves me breathless. He is astonishingly fast and he’s not going easy on me at all, at least not yet. Obi-Wan drives me across the floor, defending myself a little desperately. I have to resort to base trickery to save myself from throwing the match before it’s barely begun, by opening the bond and flooding it with the desire fueled by the sight of him glowing with sweat. He falters for only a split second, but it’s long enough for a wily old master to extricate himself from his young opponent’s trap.

“Experience and guile,” I gasp, winning a clear space for a moment.

Obi-Wan narrows his eyes, a look of determination hardening his features. “Youth and strength,” he retorts, driving at me again.

It’s an old joke between us. Or maybe not a so much a joke any more as a truism. I let him come to me again, concentrating on my parries and footwork, on not losing any ground this time, and I manage to hold him at bay as he is forced to circle me, looking for a weak point, testing, probing, pushing me and himself. Our usual roles reversed, he tests my reactions, my awareness, my concentration.

And soon he’s tired, as I suspect he planned, to even the odds a bit between us. My knight is no fool, to expend all his energy early on the way he’s been doing. His reactions slow just a little, his blows fall just a little lighter and my reach and relative freshness begin to give me some advantage.

But it’s still a long time before we fight to a standstill, our blades crossed near the casings, our gazes equally locked, breathing distance from each other. “I yield,” we say simultaneously and laugh as we step back, and salute, and bow. It’s been a good workout, a good testing of the waters for me. And another bout in which Obi-Wan has managed not to defeat his master.

“Thank you, Knight Kenobi. Well fought.”

“Thank you, Master Jinn. Well done yourself. Especially for having been so long out of practice.”

“There’s something about working with you that makes it easier to find the way again. And more pleasant.”

“We know each other,” he says simply.

“Still,” I reply. The bond floods again, this time from Obi-Wan’s direction, with love, and fondness, and desire. Obi-Wan stretches up onto his toes and kisses me.

“Always,” he says with finality.


End file.
